In China, shark fin soup is typically reserved for weddings and other special occasions. In New York, selling shark fin could get you in big trouble.

Earlier this month, environmental officials announced that a Brooklyn seafood distributor had paid a $10,000 fine for trafficking shark fins, the state’s first successful prosecution of the shark fin ban.

The illegal shipment of dried fins came in through Kennedy Airport in October, and testing revealed that some fins had been taken from threatened species, including hammerhead and blacktip reef sharks.

Tens of thousands of packages come to the United States daily through New York area entry points, and as the Fish and Wildlife Service employs only 11 inspectors, some illegal items can miss detection.

Second, when he left the city, the towers of the Brooklyn Bridge were the city’s tallest structures. By 1904, elevators had made more dizzying heights possible across the city. “The multitudinous sky-scrapers [were] like extravagant pins in a cushion already overplanted,” James wrote.

A prominent theme of James’s novels was the clash between the excess of the New World against the wisdom of the Old. He found it embodied in New York and wrote to his sister-in-law:

“Dearest Alice, I could come back to America (could be carried on a stretcher) to die — but never, never to live.”

Correction: August 28, 2015
An earlier version of this article misstated the location of an outdoor movie showing in the Bronx. “Dreamgirls” will be shown in Norwood, not Williamsbridge.

Correction: November 4, 2015
An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the destruction of a home associated with the writer Henry James. It was his father’s former residence that was torn down by New York University, not the home he was raised in. (His childhood home was also torn down, but to make way for a factory. The building on that space was given to New York University in 1929.)